July 27, 2008

Today I officially tested my brand new toy that was just released: The Nerf Vulcan!

I first experienced the Vulcan at Toy Fair 2008 and was amazed. Seriously, it was one of the coolest Nerf guns I'd ever seen and it shot incredibly far. When I started my job at Hasbro I kept seeing it, EVERYWHERE! There were Vulcans in the model shop, Vulcans in design land, Vulcans in the Toy Preview hallway. It's almost like the kid on the Vulcan box was just laughing at me. But, finally, after months of waiting, the day came. The Vulcan was set loose on the world and I bought it the day it came out. One online order and employee discount later I was ready for a big box to arrive at my door.

It arrived yesterday. I ripped it open and assembled it. I tried to fire it. No batteries. Curses! I checked what kind of batteries it needed. D cell. Crap. Six of them. CRAP! Rapid fire would have to wait until the next day (aka today). Today I went and burned up some Stop & Shop gift cards I had and bought 12 D cell batteries. Into the Vulcan they went! I loaded up the 25 round ammo belt, loaded it into the ammo box, and let loose. Here are the results:

Apart from the one random dud round, the rest of the shots went off flawlessly and when the belt was empty it fell to the ground. A couple of observations:

> The gun will EASILY jam if the Nerf darts are protruding at all from inside the belt. Make sure they are shoved in all the way.> It's also fairly important to lay the belt in the ammo box correctly, otherwise you have this weird folding pattern that can cause jamming.> This thing has three rails for sites, lights, and scopes. Mine currently has two sites and one sniper scope.> The streamline darts work just as well (those are the ones in the video, in fact), as do normal suction cup darts. Basically, if it's a Nerf dart, the Vulcan will fire it. Here's my video of the suction cup rounds being shot:

> This gun is freaking sweet, especially with two ammo belts since I don't have to reload as often. It makes a great addition to the collection.

Maybe if Hasbro decides to be awesome and start selling them in the boutique at work I can get one for $20.00! Come on Hasbro, you know you want to!

So that's it, new toy, Nerf Vulcan, sheer awesome. I'd buy one if you're into Nerf, it's a blast.

Dan brought up a good point the other day. I seem to have an affinity for birds exploding. First I published the "Be a Man" entry, then the magician one. I then realized that I could name two other exploding bird videos right off the top of my head, so I think I'll post a little exploding bird medley here. Ready?

You were perfect when you first came out. You were text only, you were clean, and you were full of legitimate people. Then, for some reason that god only knows, you decided to mySpace-ify yourself into a load of crap. That was just over a year ago. I dropped you like a bag of rotten meat, and I'm glad I did. Here's the explanation I gave last year:

First off, I'd like to explain why I deleted my Facebook account. With the creation of the "Top Friends" list, fortune cookies, and embedding videos, I've decided that Facebook has become too much like MySpace. I joined Facebook with reservation and only to talk to future classmates. Now that Facebook has grown out of control, I dumped it, I don't want to have to deal with a site that's going to slip into the land of emo sophomores. I'll continue to blog regularly and you can always get to me through this blog. I read every single comment, they are all automatically e-mailed to me. I hope deleting my account doesn't bug anybody, because I just had to do it.

Facebook came out with a new format this last Friday that everybody keeps complaining about. "It takes all of my applications off the main page!" "I hate the new tabs!" "My bumper stickers aren't displaying correctly!" "I whine a lot!"

Ok, you know what they did ladies and gentlemen? For those of you who just jumped onto the Facebook bandwagon, lemme fill you in: THEY MADE IT BETTER!

All your apps are smashed to the left and out of the way, where they belong. All that other annoying crap has been put into tabs along the top. That means, when I look at your Facebook page I'm not inundated with 30 Mb of flashy crap. Instead, I get to actually see the things I want to see.

As such, since Facebook has agreed to make amends, I am recreating my Facebook page. Just until they decide to screw it up again, and then bye bye Facebook round 2.

July 24, 2008

As you may have noticed (or maybe not), there has been a bit of a change to the fundraising thermometer in the sidebar. Instead of a goal of $300.00 it now reads $150.00. Why? Here's what happened.

My iPod didn't fall out of my pocket at Blue Man Group. As everybody left the theater we were crowded together and I was pick pocketed. That's right, somebody reached into my pocket and took the iPod out.

Today I got an e-mail with the subject "I HAVE YOUR LOST IPHONE."

E-mails with subjects like this pique my interest. I read it. The person who sent the e-mail to me purchased my iPod from somebody for $150.00, not knowing that it was stolen. When he looked at the iPod he noticed an engraving on the back that said "Michael Snively MIT 2011." (This, folks, is the reason you should always have your Apple products laser engraved). He realized, at this point, that the iPod was probably lost or stolen, so he googled the laser engraving and found my e-mail address (you try googling Michael Snively MIT 2011 and see what you find). He wants to give the iPod back in hopes that some day, when he loses something, it will be returned to him.

With your help I've saved up almost $83.00 for a replacement iPod, but that money is going somewhere else now. I'm not spending it on myself, I'm using it to help offset the $150 that this gentleman lost when he purchased my iPod. Please continue to help, it's selfless acts like eating $150.00 just to do the right thing that restore my faith in the world.

July 23, 2008

July 22, 2008

As you may have noticed, there is a new button on my sidebar. It's big, yellow, says "Donate" on it, and has a bunch of little credit cards underneath it. This magical button gives you the opportunity to transfer funds directly from your bank account to mine. No, this is not just a random attempt to become filthy rich, there's actually a reason behind this.

I went to blue man group on Saturday and was listening to my iPod on the way there. I met a friend there, we went in, and I put my headphones away (therefore, the iPod was still in my pocket). After the show I stuffed my crepe paper headband (free headbands for everybody in the audience, woo hoo!) into my pocket and left the theater. About 30 minutes later I dug into my pocket to get my iPod and check my e-mail. . . it wasn't there. I checked all of my pockets and my backpack, no iPod. I backtracked in my mind and knew that I had it when I went into blue man. I thought back to putting my headband into my pocket and realized that I didn't feel my iPod when I did that. It must have fallen out of my pocket during the show.

I called the theater twice asking if they'd found it and telling them where I was sitting and they never found it. Bye bye iPod, gone forever. It was an 8 gigabyte iPod touch and I just can't bring myself to spend paycheck money on something I lost, so I'm doing two things:

1) Donation button on blog2) Sell random crap on ebay

I don't have any of my auctions up yet, but I'll post them if I do. Is there anything in particular that you guys would like me to sell? Keep in mind, I can nab random MIT souvenirs for you (little baggies with grass from Killian Court, a copy of the Tech, Chapel moat water, etc). I'll have a thermometer on the sidebar keeping track of how much I've raised.

So you know why the marching band clips in this video are funny (except for the first one)? Because they're totally legitimate things that could happen! In fact, I've seen all of them (or at least variations of all of them) happen at one time or another. Actually, the cheerleader running into the pole after one of the marching band clips, I've done that. Well, sort of, I was marching and actually knocked the pole over, but same type of thing.

July 05, 2008

Yesterday was the fourth of July, a holiday that is welcomed with open arms in Boston MA. A couple of things come with the the fourth of July around here. The first are airplane advertisements and helicopters. Seriously, the airspace is so busy I'm surprised there wasn't an accident.

Next come emergency service personnel . . .

Boats . . .

500,000 people . . .

And just as many cops (why does everything I do involve cops!?)

Night fell on Boston but before the festivities and the music began I'd like to note two more things. Number one, the sunset was AMAZING!

My camera simply can't do it justice, but I tried my hardest!

And, there was obviously an issue in the brain and cog building because they accidentally let some zombies out.

Then it was time for the music. The Boston Pops performed the National Anthem and then at the very end, synchronized perfectly (which is no small feat, I appreciate the work you do, whoever was in charge of getting that set up), was a flyover.

While the music played, little kids played with glowsticks and families chatted happily. Dan Sauza and I decided to walk the length of the river and check things out. This is when we saw the sign that said "Fried Dough!"

I'm not sure there's anything more American than finding a perfectly good, wholesome food substance and soaking it in boiling fat. The proud Americans we are, Dan and I got in line for our fried dough.

While in line we glanced over and saw the hot dog booth. The only thing more American than fried dough is a hot dog. I saw no reason why the two of us couldn't be the uber-Americans of the evening, so after another quick wait in another line, Dan and I were in possession of the most American, most awesome, most delectably wholesome food known to man: The fried dough-dog. Just use your fried dough as a hot dog bun, poof, magically delicious!

Next were the fireworks, something I didn't record but thoroughly enjoyed. I'd say the two best things about these fireworks were

a) the fact that you could actually feel the sound waves hit youb) they had fireworks that exploded in the shapes of cubes! How!?

4th of July is something else, you should try to make it out here for it sometime, you won't regret it!